Council Meeting Recap: August and September

by Carol Lawless, Recorder and Evan Jones, Editor

The new STC year kicked off with our council meetings in August and September, where we discussed what should be done to make our chapter successful in the months ahead.

August Meeting Recap

We held our planning meeting on August 19th and discussed five key goals and compiled a list of activities to help bring us closer to those goals. What we aimed to do were the following:

• Maintain or increase membership
• Increase visibility of the chapter
• Increase attendance at meetings
• Increase visibility of the newsletter
• Recruit more volunteers and fill our key council positions

To start off we reviewed the current membership to see if it is up to date. We also considered holding our meetings online, so we plan to contact the head office for more information regarding that possibility.

We decided that the Quill should be published on every other month - usually in the month where there is no general meeting.

The council also decided to advertise at various job fairs in the area and investigated to see if we could take part at the upcoming WLU and Communitech job fairs.

We also decided to run an Education Workshop and confirmed possible dates for our guest speakers.

The STC competition will be in full swing and we are looking to connect with the Toronto chapter to see if we can co-host the event with them.

For our general meetings, the council considered various topics such as employment progression, using technical writing as a stepping stone to other careers, measuring quality in technical writing, and another year-end event at the theatre.

Student Awards

Members of the council plan to set up university liaisons.

Filling Key Positions

We need to fill several more positions for this year: Competition Manager, Education Manager, PR Manager, Program Manager, Student Awards Manager, and Webmaster.

September Meeting

In September, we met at the Kitchener Public Library and quickly reviewed the minutes from the August meeting to ensure that there are no errors or omissions.

Finances

We reviews the budget for the council year.

General Meetings

We reviewed the status of the general meeting on October 7 with regards to the speakers, PR, progression progress. As well, we were to provide a summary of meeting covered so far and to discuss what topics and speakers we might have for other meetings.

Events

We'll be hosting at least three events over the fall.

Competition

We've discussed this year's competition and suggested ideas on how to best work with STC Toronto.

Associate Fellow: Patrick Hofmann

Patrick has agreed to do a presentation about his citation.

Education Days

We've confirm the dates for the chapter's education days and check for Ryan's involvement with the event.

Distinguished Chapter Service Award

We are considering nominees for this special award. The submission deadline is November 30. Please submit the names of people who you think deserve this award. They should have filled a variety of council positions over a long period of time.

Website

Ted has considered several changes to the website, from incorporating the chapter's new logo to restricting access to the job bank to members only.

The Quill

There has been an update on the status of the publishing dates for the newsletter. It will be a quarterly issue, like last year.

Student Awards

We're also looking to work on aspects o the student awards.

About Carol Lawless

Carol has been a member of our profession since 1993 and is a senior STC member. She is a founding partner of KCA Consulting, specializing in web usability and usability testing. She's also an independent contractor, when a suitable project arises. She is our official recorder at council. Outside of the STC and work, Carol's special interest is Ancient Civilizations, and still does not tire of visiting ruins (her favourite is Delphi with Karnak a close second). In her spare time, she runs Mom's taxi and loves to read (while waiting for the next taxi run!).